About Lipscomb
FIX THE DEBT, NOW
By Turney Stevens, Dean
The United States owes over $16 trillion dollars.
Even with recent budget cuts, known as sequestration, the nation is going in the hole at a rate of about $1 trillion more each year.
It’s been over three years since the Senate has even approved a budget.
Although the official debt of the country is $16 trillion, the “unfunded” liabilities total more than $50 trillion.
And on and on and on. You’re read about all of this. Most Americans are familiar with the basic facts. The question is what to do about it.
Our guest this week on Conversations with the Dean is Tim Pagliara, co-chairman of Fix The Debt, a Tennessee group seeking to educate the public on the options available to solve this national disgrace. The organization has partnered with the Concord Coalition, a well-known initiative started by former Treasury Secretary Pete Peterson, with similar objectives.
In addition to its initiatives with the general public, the group is traveling to various campuses and engaging students in team exercises in which each team is given the various options available to Congress and the President as they wrestle with the hard choices that must be made. We hosted the group here at Lipscomb and, surprisingly, the choices are not as hard as we are sometimes led to believe. For example, raising the social security payment limit from just over $100,000 to just under $200,000 would instantly wipe out half of the current deficit.
Tim’s day job is Founder and CEO of CapWealth Advisors LLC. He is a graduate of St. Louis University, earning both an undergraduate and law degree from that institution. He has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro not once, but six times and is licensed as a United States Coast Guard 100-ton Master Capitan.